Poetry

Teleology

Teleology

Jody's Notes

So this is a bit odd. I submitted this poem, another one (Making surface of it all) and a couple of others together to Seems. I'd written Teleology and then written Making surface of it all afterwards. (I didn't mention this to the editor.) But he felt they should go together as one poem. I stared at them and stared at them, trying to read them continuously as one poem. And then I decided two things: (1) I couldn't see it, I just couldn't. The sentiments are quite different. (2) I let the editor have his way in the publication. (Because maybe I'm wrong: I'm not the final authority on my own poems--after I die they'll be on their own, so they'd better get started on that now. And besides, I did write one after the other, so maybe I was confused in some way: thought I was writing two poems when I was actually writing only one.)

I've continued to stare at them after publication. Trying to see how the editor saw them as going together. And I still don't get it. So I've separated the poems again--but you can put them back together if you agree with the editor of Seems.

What's crucial--I think--is that both poems are expressing specific sentiments, and they aren't the same sentiments. (I mean that in the sense: the poems are truly expressing different sentiments, not in the sense that the author thought he was expressing different sentiments.)